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Law and Disorder is a weekly independent civil liberties radio program airing on more than 150 stations and on Apple podcast. Law and Disorder provides timely legal perspectives on issues concerning civil liberties, privacy, right to dissent and practices of torture exercised by the US government and private corporations.
Law and Disorder October 29, 2018
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What Happened To Journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
This much has become clear: 33-year-old Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman knew of or directed the gruesome torture, murder, and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018.
The US has had an alliance with the Saudi theocratic monarchy since it was forged by President Roosevelt in 1945 at the end of World War II.
The United States needs Saudi Arabia to help rule the Middle East. It needs their cooperation in keeping oil prices low, their petro-dollars, their arms purchases, and it needs Saudi Arabian support for both its planned war against Iran and it’s support for a joint Israeli/American planned effort to permanently repress the Palestinian people, an effort which Trump has put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of. But with the murder of Khashoggi the US/ Saudi alliance is beginning to fray.
Guest – Attorney Abdeen Jabara, the former president of the Arab American Anti-discrimination Committee, a leader of Palestine solidarity work in the National Lawyers Guild. He’s also a former board member at the Center for Constitutional
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Necessity Defense: Climate Defense Project
Earlier this month a judge dismissed the case against three environmental activists who were charged with damaging a northern Minnesota pipeline in 2016. The defendants call themselves as “valve turners.” They shut off the valves of two Enbridge Energy Company pipelines near Leonard in Clearwater County to protest the oil industry’s contribution to climate change. The action was part of a coordinated effort across several states.
Like the defendants, their 3-person legal team traveled thousands of miles to present their case in the small northwoods town. The team consisted of Kelsey Skaggs from the Climate Defense Project in San Francisco and Twin-Cities based attorney Timothy Phillips along with Oregon-based Lauren Regan.
State representative Pat Garofalo, said: “Today’s decision is irresponsible, and sends the message that protesters are free to engage in reckless, illegal, and dangerous behavior that puts Minnesotans’ safety at risk.” He said this dangerous action needs to be corrected in the next legislative session.” Judge Robert Tiffany dismissed the case at the defense attorneys’ request midway through the second day of trial after County Attorney Alan Rogalla rested his case.
Tiffany granted the dismissal based on arguments from the defense attorneys, one of which was that the prosecution failed to prove the defendants had damaged the actual pipeline rather than merely the chains and locks bound to the pipeline valve. Enbridge supervisor Bill Palmer testified that simply shutting off the valve would not have caused any damage to the pipeline.
Guest – Kelsey Skaggs, Executive Director of the Climate Defense Project.
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Law and Disorder October 22, 2018
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Chris Hedges – America: the Farewell Tour
We are living in terrible times. Novelist Barbara Kingsolver has said that “it feels like the end of the world.” Last week hurricane Michael destroyed much of the Florida Panhandle. Before that hurricanes decimated Puerto Rico and before that Houston and before that New Orleans. Climate scientists predict it will only get worse and that we are rapidly running out of time to hold the disaster.
Many people have observed that Trump is a symptom, not the disease. The insurgency in the Republican Party has installed a purposeful, strategic and successful ultra right into power in all three branches of the Federal government and in the legislatures of half the states.
The war in Afghanistan has been pursued for 17 years. Iraq and Libya have been destroyed. The military budget was increased by 10% and is now some $700 billion a year, half of what the government spends all together. Are we on the verge of climate catastrophe, a great economic crash, or the end of the American empire?
Guest – Chris Hedges has written 11 books including the recently published America: the Farewell Tour. Although he is a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, Chris Hedges was pushed out of the New York times where he was reporter for publicly criticizing the Iraq war. Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist. He was also a war correspondent, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. His most recent book is ‘Death of the Liberal Class (2010). Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
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Law and Disorder October 15, 2018
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The Power of Public Outrage: Laquan McDonald’s Place in History
Jason van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who four years ago shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in the back, was found guilty on October 5th of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery by Chicago jury.
This was the first time in 50 years that a Chicago police officer has been found guilty of murdering somebody while he was on duty.
The McDonald murder was massively covered up beginning with the cops who were on the job with van Dyke, the commanding officers of the Chicago police department, up to the office of the Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Key to the conviction was video footage taken by a police car dash camera. This video was suppressed by the police, and the mayor for three years and only revealed after a massive campaign by a number of Chicago grassroots organizations. Nationally, there have been no convictions in the murders of Eric Gardner, Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin.
Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the USA. Recently 50 Chicago schools have been closed as well as many mental health clinics. Even the parking meters have been sold in a wave of divestment from the inner-city.
Guest – Attorney G.Flint Taylor, a graduate of Brown University and Northwestern Law School, is a founding partner of the People’s Law Office in Chicago, an office which has been dedicated to litigating civil rights, police violence, government misconduct, and death penalty cases for more than 40 years.
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Neo-Colonial Regime Kill Peaceful Ambazonian Protesters in Africa
Ambazonia is an English-speaking territory located between Cameroon and Nigeria in West Africa. Also known as the Southern Cameroons, for most of its recent history it has been under military occupation by the French neo-colonial regime in Cameroon. A majority of Ambazonians reject the legitimacy of this regime and its military control.
In violation of an agreement to create an equal confederacy between the two autonomous states, French Cameroon has been dismantling and defunding Ambazonian systems, and pillaging its resources since the country was created in 1961.
Since December 2016, French Cameroon military has responded to peaceful protests with force, killing over 400 civilians. 200 more have been disappeared and are feared dead. More than 90 villages burnt down, resulting in 60,000 people fleeing to neighboring Nigeria.
More than 2,500 activist and peaceful protesters imprisoned, some tried in military courts, a violation of international law, and some sentenced for terrorism and other unjustifiable charges. Prisoners include prominent nonviolence advocate Julius AyukTabe and 11 of his senior aides, arrested in January 2018, and unlawfully repatriated. Julius’s appeal hearing just happened last Thursday.
On January 26, 2018—with no extradition treaty between Cameroon and Nigeria, and without a presiding judge—Nigeria forcibly handed 10 of the prisoners and 37 other refugees to Cameroon. That was in violation of international law forbidding a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country where they likely face persecution. This action drew condemnation from Amnesty International, the UNHCR, the U.S. Department of State, and other leading human rights advocates. The Ambazonia Prisoners of Conscience Support Network, or APOCS, was recently formed to address this crisis.
Guest – Sphynx Eben, a founding member of APOCS and also a longtime media organizer with the Indymedia Africa Working Group. https://www.facebook.com/apocsnetwork/
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